9780195106497

Compare book prices
at 110 online bookstores
worldwide for the lowest price for new & used textbooks and
discount books! 1 click to get great deals on cheap books, cheap
textbooks & discount college textbooks on sale.

Book Description

First Intermissions: Twenty-One Great Operas Explored, Explained, and Brought to Life From the Met

Millions of opera fans tune in faithfully to the Metropolitan Opera's famous Saturday radio series. One of the program's highlights occurs during the first intermission, when invited speakers offer live, stimulating commentary on the opera aired that day. And for the last twelve years one of the most popular guests on this program has been M. Owen Lee, a Catholic priest and classics scholar, who has emerged as a brilliant and engaging speaker with a gift for making opera relevant to modern concerns. Now, in First Intermissions, Father Lee presents twenty-one of his finest radio talks, analyzing some of the best loved operas in the current repertoire, including masterworks by Mozart, Verdi, Wagner, Puccini, and Strauss. This is a book that brims with opera lore, with the love of fine music, and with an abundance of good humor. Father Lee writes brilliantly about the music itself, offering insights into composition that even a novice can grasp and enjoy. But for Father Lee, opera is more than beautiful music. Opera is about the human condition, our capacity for good and evil, our unconscious thoughts and conscious actions, our sorrows and our joys, our stories, our myths, and our personal triumphs and tragedies. It is great art confronting life head on: the conflict between fathers and children in Verdi, the irreversibility of time in Strauss, or the quest for self-realization in Wagner. Father Lee brings the real story of opera to life--great stories that make us see beyond the plot and feel the music as a blow to the heart. What also strikes the reader about Father Lee's style is that it is very intimate, not only sprinkled with personal anecdotes (such as saving pennies in Depression-era Detroit to buy sheet music from Sears and Roebuck), but informed throughout by his open-hearted response to opera's magic. Father Lee's love of opera shines through these pieces, and his enthusiasm is contagious, sending readers straight to their record collections--or the nearest record store--to savor once again the marvels of opera. When Father Owen Lee first appeared on the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts, he was given two criteria. "I could say anything I pleased," he recalls, "so long as (1) it was instantly intelligible to the little old lady in Dubuque and the little old gentleman in Des Moines and (2) it was something no one anywhere, of either sex or any age, had ever thought of before." Whether discussing Puccini's La Boheme or Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier or Gounod's Faust, Father Lee remains utterly original and always in touch with the little old lady in Dubuque.

This site was created for shoppers to compare book prices and find cheap books
and cheap college textbooks. A lot of discount books and discount text books
are put on sale by many discounted book retailers and discount bookstores everyday.
You just need to search and find them. Our site provides many book links to
some major bookstores for book details and book coupons. But be sure not just
jump into any bookstore site to buy. Always click "Compare Price" button to
compare prices first. You would be happy that how much you could save by doing
book price comparison.

Buy Books from Foreign Country

Our goal is to find the cheapest books and college textbooks for you, both
new and used books, from a large number of bookstores worldwide. Currently our
book search engines fetch book prices from US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand,
Netherlands, Ireland, Germany, France, and Japan. More bookstores from other
countries will be added soon. Before buying from a foreign book store or book
shop, be sure to check the shipping options. It's not unusual that shipping
could take 2 -3 weeks and cost could be multiple of a domestic shipping charge.

Buy Used Books and Used Textbooks

Buying used books and used textbooks is becoming more and more popular among
college students for saving. Different second hand books could have different
conditions. Be sure check used book condition from the seller's description.
Also many book marketplaces put books for sale from small bookstores and individual
sellers. Make sure to check store review for seller's reputation when available.
If you are in a hurry to get a book or textbook for your class, you would better
choose buying new books for prompt shipping.